been that long and she can’t keep this pace of hobbies up forever.’
‘Mum has always been very determined,’ Keeley reminded. ‘It could really actually last forever.’ Particularly when no one could predict exactly how long you got with forever…
‘Have a crumpet,’ Duncan whispered. ‘Just take some fruit and seeds to go with your lunch. I’ll go and check on Mum. Give her the bad news about the cranberries.’ He smiled. ‘Wish me luck.’ He drew the side of his hand across his throat like it was a knife.
Luck. Yes, everyone needed a little bit of luck in their life, didn’t they?
Two
House 2 Home, Kensington, London
‘Well, Brandon, tell me, what can your favourite estate agent do for you today?’
Rach was already at her desk when Keeley arrived at the estate agency only a fifteen-minute stroll from her family home. Feet up on her desk, taking advantage of every tilt the chair had to offer, a Santa hat complete with bell over her wavy blonde hair and a green dress that looked straight out of Father Christmas’s workshop, Rach nestled the phone under her face and held up her coffee mug mouthing the words ‘it’s a two-sugar morning’. Then the mug dropped a little.
‘I beg your pardon!’ Rach exclaimed. Her expression was belying the tone and there was a definite spark in her eyes. ‘I was expecting you to ask me about the three-bedroom mews house, not say something that would put you straight to the top of Santa’s naughty list.’ She gave a smutty giggle as Keeley took the mug from her hands and headed through the office towards the kitchen at the rear.
Rach was an estate agent. Keeley wasn’t. Keeley wasn’t anything really. Since the night the taxi had crashed, everything had fallen away, in slow motion, like a snowy nightmare sequence in a film. One moment she was set to start a new life – leaving her job as an assistant to an interior designer and starting her very own business – the next she was in an operating theatre fighting for her life while her sister tragically lost hers. Everything had changed that night. Bea gone. Her career finished before it had even begun. And now, here she was, living back at home and working as a ‘house doctor’ for House 2 Home. It wasn’t exactly how she thought she would be using her artistic eye. She had envisaged her working day to involve the careful designing of a bespoke wallpaper as opposed to deciding what cactus looked best on what Ikea sideboard. But it was a job and it paid OK and there was that short commute. Plus, to ease her mum’s anxiety further, the business belonged to a friend of the family, Roland Krantz, so you could guarantee if she ran a temperature, had a headache or was in any way not one hundred per cent feeling top notch, Lizzie would know about it by lunchtime…
Keeley put the kettle on and leaned back against the worktop, studying the advent calendar Rach had stuck up at least two weeks ago. Only November and doors open already. Surely that was bad luck. She sighed. What was it with the word ‘luck’ today?
Rach marched into the kitchen. ‘Bloody Randy Brandon is up for it already and it’s not even eight-thirty.’ She looked at her watch as if to clarify her statement. ‘It’s not even eight-thirty. What are you doing here already?’
‘My mum accused me of dicing with death by trying to get a giant crumpet out of the toaster with a fork,’ Keeley answered. ‘And then I ate the crumpet… with some blueberry jam none of us were supposed to be eating and, before I left, she hit my dad over the head with an artisan multigrain baguette because some cranberries got burned.’
‘Shit,’ Rach replied. ‘And here I was complaining about being offered a shag before my second coffee.’
‘Yes, well, I definitely have the best excuse for having two sugars in my coffee,’ Keeley said with a smile.
‘Yeah and hold that thought,’ Rach said. ‘Because you might want to make it three sugars when I tell you what Roland has in store for you today.’ She pulled at the hem of her very short costume.
‘Oh God,’ Keeley said, closing her eyes, taking a deep breath and then opening them again, watching as Rach ripped at another door on the advent calendar. ‘It’s nothing to do with the radio station, is it?’